OK, here's what you're going to do. Next time you go grocery shopping, you're going to take a quick peek in your refrigerator to make sure you have a little lemon juice or a fresh lemon. (I think lime juice would also work.) Then, when you get to the store, you'll go to the produce section and check out the avocados.
The avocado you want is ripe but not overly so. If you're new to this, the one you want will give a bit to gentle pressure but not feel squishy. (GENTLE pressure - no need to harm anything.) For this application, a little squishy is okay.
When you get home with your prize, you're going to cut it in half lengthwise, working around the large pit in the middle. You'll then rotate one half against the other, and one of the two halves will be freed from the pit.
There are a number of suggested methods for removing the pit from the other half, most of which have the potential for serious injury. I sometimes use one of those, but often I just work around the with a spoon. (I deal with more avocados than most home cooks, I'd guess. Two - and now three - of my favorite things to make include them. See here and here.)
Next, put your avocado halves on a plate. Salt them and drizzle them with lemon juice. Then just eat those suckers, scooping bites out with a spoon.
I did this for the first time 20 minutes ago, and that first bite was A Moment. The tartness of the juice perfectly balanced the unctuousness of the avocado, one of those great combinations of acid and oil. (Think salad dressings, or pickles on cheeseburgers, or ketchup on french fries.)
If I had a rating scale for how much I wanted you to try something, this would be WAY up there.
You could argue that this isn't even cooking. Fine. But it is most certainly eating.
Showing posts with label technique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technique. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Tiny Bubbles
"Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble..." Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'
Many years ago - I was still living at home, in fact - I attempted to make an angel food cake. I remember how tired my arm got from holding the electric egg beater, and I also remember how the end result was more of an angel food discus.
When I began to seriously considered getting a stand mixer, one of the first uses that occurred to me was to have another showdown with my old enemy angel food. I've looked at a few recipes, and when I recently acquired the "America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Baking Book" I found a recipe I decided I could probably trust. I also acquired a tube pan.
This last Tuesday found me In A Mood. The frustrations of the day suddenly coalesced in a weird recklessness, so I bought a dozen eggs on the way home from work and headed immediately into the kitchen.
The thing with angel food, see, is bubbles. You start by creating your bubbles by whipping air into egg whites that have been fortified with sugar (powdered in a food processor) and cream of tarter. You then provide structure for your bubbles by adding your dry ingredients, carefully folding so as to disturb as few as your bubbles as possible. After baking, you let your cake cool upside down so that your bubbles are not crushed by the weight of the structure you provided for them.
Here is what my bubbles looked like after I removed them from the pan:
And here is a slice of my bubbles:
Thanks to a good recipe, a reasonable level of care and obedience on my part, and perhaps a little luck, my bubbles were fabulous. They were moist, tender yet with a satisfying bit of chew, and were bundled together in a very nice consistency. My very favorite thing, which was true only of that first very fresh piece, was that the browned surfaces were covered with what seemed to be an extremely thin layer of candy, so there was a tiny bit of crunch. That layer was gone by morning, I'm assuming due to having 'melted' in moisture absorbed from the air. It was still wonderful, though, and the people I shared it with loved it.
A few days after making my cake, I happened to see an episode of the America's Test Kitchen program "Cook's Country" in which they demonstrated precisely the recipe I had followed. It was weird but gratifying to watch them step through the procedure I had followed, and it seemed to me that I really had done it pretty much right. They seemed to get more bubbles whipped into their eggs than I did, and thus their finished cake had maybe an inch more rise, but I don't feel even a scintilla of regret - they're the experts, after all, and who knows if they were able to get their fabulous result on the first take?
I have to say that while there was some toil and even a bit of trouble in making my bubbles, I don't have any trouble contemplating making this again. It really was a success.
Many years ago - I was still living at home, in fact - I attempted to make an angel food cake. I remember how tired my arm got from holding the electric egg beater, and I also remember how the end result was more of an angel food discus.
When I began to seriously considered getting a stand mixer, one of the first uses that occurred to me was to have another showdown with my old enemy angel food. I've looked at a few recipes, and when I recently acquired the "America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Baking Book" I found a recipe I decided I could probably trust. I also acquired a tube pan.
This last Tuesday found me In A Mood. The frustrations of the day suddenly coalesced in a weird recklessness, so I bought a dozen eggs on the way home from work and headed immediately into the kitchen.
The thing with angel food, see, is bubbles. You start by creating your bubbles by whipping air into egg whites that have been fortified with sugar (powdered in a food processor) and cream of tarter. You then provide structure for your bubbles by adding your dry ingredients, carefully folding so as to disturb as few as your bubbles as possible. After baking, you let your cake cool upside down so that your bubbles are not crushed by the weight of the structure you provided for them.
Here is what my bubbles looked like after I removed them from the pan:
And here is a slice of my bubbles:
Thanks to a good recipe, a reasonable level of care and obedience on my part, and perhaps a little luck, my bubbles were fabulous. They were moist, tender yet with a satisfying bit of chew, and were bundled together in a very nice consistency. My very favorite thing, which was true only of that first very fresh piece, was that the browned surfaces were covered with what seemed to be an extremely thin layer of candy, so there was a tiny bit of crunch. That layer was gone by morning, I'm assuming due to having 'melted' in moisture absorbed from the air. It was still wonderful, though, and the people I shared it with loved it.
A few days after making my cake, I happened to see an episode of the America's Test Kitchen program "Cook's Country" in which they demonstrated precisely the recipe I had followed. It was weird but gratifying to watch them step through the procedure I had followed, and it seemed to me that I really had done it pretty much right. They seemed to get more bubbles whipped into their eggs than I did, and thus their finished cake had maybe an inch more rise, but I don't feel even a scintilla of regret - they're the experts, after all, and who knows if they were able to get their fabulous result on the first take?
I have to say that while there was some toil and even a bit of trouble in making my bubbles, I don't have any trouble contemplating making this again. It really was a success.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tamale's Another Day: A Tale of Failure and Redemption
I was scheduled to go to a small party Wednesday night, and I volunteered to make tamales. I'd made tamales once before, and it's a lot of work, but I had a plan to spread out the labor and felt reasonably confident.
The Filling
I chose to make the filling for my tamales from this recipe. Since I wanted some tamales for my freezer beyond what I needed for the party, so I decided to make four dozen. I'd need quite a bit of chicken, so I cooked it according to the "chicken and broth" method here. I cooked up five pounds of chicken breasts (well more than I'd have needed, but I wasn't sure how to estimate). After I removed the chicken from the cooking liquid, I made my firtst mistake, which was to forget about the liquid. I'd intended to use the reserved broth in making the dough, but I let it sit on the stovetop for way too long to be sure of safety.
Also that night, I shredded two ponds of cheese and roasted and over a dozen chiles for the filling and the salsa verse I intended to serve on the side. (Mistake #2 was not wearing gloves when working with the chiles -- poblanos and anaheims don't usually bother me, but that was a lot of pepper, and my hands were fairly uncomfortable when I went to bed.
Finally, I chopped the chiles and made the salsa verse, which I'll detail in a separate post.
The Husks
Tuesday night, I had to bus to a market a few miles from my apartment to get the dried husks for the tamales. After a wasted hour and a half upon my return, a quick web search taught me that the husks don't need to be unrolled from the little bundles they're sold in.
Masa and Disaster
My source for both the masa recipe and the overall procedure is Simply Mexican by Lourdes Castro, a book I really like. Though I'd made this recipe successfully before, doubling the amount proved to be the death of my cheap hand mixer. This might have been okay, since I'd worked it for nearly long enough anyway, but then I killed the thing by misreading the recipe and adding triple the amount of baking powder. (I steamed a little of the dough, to see if I could use it anyway, but it tasted really salty.)
I thought about restarting the dough, but I was tired and had rattled nerves and just couldn't face it. Nor could I summon enthusiasm for the alternatives I could think of. Finally, in a stroke of culinary genius, I walked to a local restaurant and BOUGHT two dozen tamales. (No, I didn't tell people at the party that I'd made them.)
Redemption Casserole
This afternoon, I summoned nerve to do something with all that filling I'd made. I had put the mix in a casserole dish, and I topped it with the cornmeal mix from this recipe and shoved it in a 350 degree oven for half an hour. It was pretty good. It wasn't really redemption, put it was pretty good.
I'd love to be able to say that I'd drawn big lessons from this experience, but I really didn't. Stuff is going to happen, and I'm going to make mistakes. Though I was temporarily shaken, I think I'll recover quickly and try again soon.
After all, there's always tamale.
The Filling
I chose to make the filling for my tamales from this recipe. Since I wanted some tamales for my freezer beyond what I needed for the party, so I decided to make four dozen. I'd need quite a bit of chicken, so I cooked it according to the "chicken and broth" method here. I cooked up five pounds of chicken breasts (well more than I'd have needed, but I wasn't sure how to estimate). After I removed the chicken from the cooking liquid, I made my firtst mistake, which was to forget about the liquid. I'd intended to use the reserved broth in making the dough, but I let it sit on the stovetop for way too long to be sure of safety.
Also that night, I shredded two ponds of cheese and roasted and over a dozen chiles for the filling and the salsa verse I intended to serve on the side. (Mistake #2 was not wearing gloves when working with the chiles -- poblanos and anaheims don't usually bother me, but that was a lot of pepper, and my hands were fairly uncomfortable when I went to bed.
Finally, I chopped the chiles and made the salsa verse, which I'll detail in a separate post.
The Husks
Tuesday night, I had to bus to a market a few miles from my apartment to get the dried husks for the tamales. After a wasted hour and a half upon my return, a quick web search taught me that the husks don't need to be unrolled from the little bundles they're sold in.
Masa and Disaster
My source for both the masa recipe and the overall procedure is Simply Mexican by Lourdes Castro, a book I really like. Though I'd made this recipe successfully before, doubling the amount proved to be the death of my cheap hand mixer. This might have been okay, since I'd worked it for nearly long enough anyway, but then I killed the thing by misreading the recipe and adding triple the amount of baking powder. (I steamed a little of the dough, to see if I could use it anyway, but it tasted really salty.)
I thought about restarting the dough, but I was tired and had rattled nerves and just couldn't face it. Nor could I summon enthusiasm for the alternatives I could think of. Finally, in a stroke of culinary genius, I walked to a local restaurant and BOUGHT two dozen tamales. (No, I didn't tell people at the party that I'd made them.)
Redemption Casserole
This afternoon, I summoned nerve to do something with all that filling I'd made. I had put the mix in a casserole dish, and I topped it with the cornmeal mix from this recipe and shoved it in a 350 degree oven for half an hour. It was pretty good. It wasn't really redemption, put it was pretty good.
I'd love to be able to say that I'd drawn big lessons from this experience, but I really didn't. Stuff is going to happen, and I'm going to make mistakes. Though I was temporarily shaken, I think I'll recover quickly and try again soon.
After all, there's always tamale.
Friday, December 23, 2011
A Cutlet Above the Rest
Unless I'm doing Big Protein (such as a roast), I prefer to do most of my meat on the stovetop rather than the oven. Watching a cooking show recently, I saw the host make "chicken cutlets" by slicing breasts horizontally. This produces two pieces that will not only cook more quickly but also more evenly.
The show host accomplished this by laying the breast flat on a cutting board. She put her non-knife-holding hand on top of the meat to steady it, and made a cut through the meat parallel to the cutting board. This should be done carefully, both to produce reasonably even slices and to avoid cutting yourself. The pictures here show a slightly different method of doing it, but should help you get the idea.
Chicken cutlets can also be made by placing the breast between two pieces of plastic wrap or wax paper and pounding it thin. I've done this, but found the horizontal slicing to be easier and gave better results for me.
Despite my concern that my rudimentary knife skills, I decided to give it a try. I was quite pleased - it was easier to make the cut than I expected, and the resulting cuts cooked up quite satisfactorily.
The show host accomplished this by laying the breast flat on a cutting board. She put her non-knife-holding hand on top of the meat to steady it, and made a cut through the meat parallel to the cutting board. This should be done carefully, both to produce reasonably even slices and to avoid cutting yourself. The pictures here show a slightly different method of doing it, but should help you get the idea.
Chicken cutlets can also be made by placing the breast between two pieces of plastic wrap or wax paper and pounding it thin. I've done this, but found the horizontal slicing to be easier and gave better results for me.
Despite my concern that my rudimentary knife skills, I decided to give it a try. I was quite pleased - it was easier to make the cut than I expected, and the resulting cuts cooked up quite satisfactorily.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Learning My ABCs
I've only been working seriously on my cooking skills for about a year. And, other than a quarter of Home Economics in high school and watching a lot of cooking shows, I haven't had any real cooking instruction. So, it's to be expected that there are plenty of pretty basic things that I don't know.
I ran into one of these holes tonight. I was making a sauce in which I would be tossing some chicken drumsticks. The recipe called for reducing the mixture "until it coats the back of a spoon".
The trouble, you see, is that I've never actually made a reduction sauce before. And I had no idea about what the back of the spoon thing meant. But, I forged onward, figuring that I'd recognize that stage when I got there. I let my mixture simmer for about the suggested time, stuck a spoon into it, and looked at the spoon's back.
The spoon's back was wet. Of course it was wet: my sauce was not so volatile as to dry in the second or two I was staring at it. This is when it occurred to me that I had no idea how to tell "coated" from "wet". And, I gave up too soon. Thus, my drumsticks were less "glazed" than "damp". Bobby Flay would not have been begging me to come be his sous chef.
After talking to a friend on Twitter, I did an web search and came up with this link. Having read it, the finger part of the test rang a bell - I've seen this done on TV. It makes sense. That is, it makes sense NOW, sitting at my computer instead of standing at the stove.
I truly don't feel badly about this - it's just something else I needed to learn, albeit something that I could have best learned standing at the elbow of a more experienced cook.
Sometime over the next few days, I'm going to make myself up some dark-colored liquid with some honey in it and reduce it. I'll test it every few minutes until it clearly passes the "back of the spoon" standard to get some actual experience with it and it actually becomes part of my skill set. And I'll be that little bit closer to being able to make myself some dinner.I
I ran into one of these holes tonight. I was making a sauce in which I would be tossing some chicken drumsticks. The recipe called for reducing the mixture "until it coats the back of a spoon".
The trouble, you see, is that I've never actually made a reduction sauce before. And I had no idea about what the back of the spoon thing meant. But, I forged onward, figuring that I'd recognize that stage when I got there. I let my mixture simmer for about the suggested time, stuck a spoon into it, and looked at the spoon's back.
The spoon's back was wet. Of course it was wet: my sauce was not so volatile as to dry in the second or two I was staring at it. This is when it occurred to me that I had no idea how to tell "coated" from "wet". And, I gave up too soon. Thus, my drumsticks were less "glazed" than "damp". Bobby Flay would not have been begging me to come be his sous chef.
After talking to a friend on Twitter, I did an web search and came up with this link. Having read it, the finger part of the test rang a bell - I've seen this done on TV. It makes sense. That is, it makes sense NOW, sitting at my computer instead of standing at the stove.
I truly don't feel badly about this - it's just something else I needed to learn, albeit something that I could have best learned standing at the elbow of a more experienced cook.
Sometime over the next few days, I'm going to make myself up some dark-colored liquid with some honey in it and reduce it. I'll test it every few minutes until it clearly passes the "back of the spoon" standard to get some actual experience with it and it actually becomes part of my skill set. And I'll be that little bit closer to being able to make myself some dinner.I
Sunday, December 18, 2011
I Have Truffles of My Own
Every so often, I watch somebody on a cooking show make chocolate ganache and then make it into truffles. After a while, I developed an urge to try it for myself.
1. The Ganache
Ganache sounds incredibly fancy, but it isn't hard. The recipe I followed, from the iPad app of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything", just had me heat heavy cream and pouring it over chopped bittersweet chocolate and stirring until melted. I needed to give my mixture about 20 seconds in the microwave for a bit of reheating in order to get it smooth.
2. Forming the Truffles
The ganache has to get solid in the refrigerator in order to be formed into truffles. My recipe said this would take an hour or two: I just left it in there over night.
The ganache not only has to GET cold, it has to STAY cold: I was amazed at how little it took to get it too soft to form. I wore latex gloves (purchased for working with fresh chile peppers) as I worked. After my third scoop of ganache turned out too soft to work with, I also wound up putting my bowl of ganache into a larger bowl with ice water to keep it solid: this actually worked quite well.
To form the truffles, I scooped about a tablespoon of the ganache and quickly rolled it between my gloved hands until it was kind of ball-shaped. As you can see, my truffles are perfectly round and uniform in size:
*ahem* Or not.
3. Coatings
I chose to follow three suggestions for coatings in which to roll my poor naked truffles. I chopped some mixed nuts, and I also used some sweetened coconut I have at the moment and unsweetened cocoa powder.
(I also tried adding about one part of ancho chile powder to about four parts of cocoa powder, but a pinch of that was WAY too strong. I still like the idea, but that's an experiment for another day.)
4. Assembly
While I prepped the coatings, I had my truffles getting chilled again in the refrigerator. While I think this was a good plan, I also think I might let them sit out for just a couple of minutes before I began rolling. I think it works better when they're a little bit soft.
I found it very easy to coat the truffles with the cocoa, reasonably easy with the chopped nuts, and a bit of a challenge with the coconut.
Here are the final truffles:
These truffles will obviously take no time at all at room temperature to become too soft too eat neatly. I'll keep them refrigerated, and I'm glad I don't have to transport them in August. I wonder if a different formulation of ganache would be just a little more solid.
I found these REALLY easy to make, actually, and much easier than cooked sugar candies. (For those of you scoring it home, the tally is currently Cooked Candy 4, Pedersen 1. But I will have success eventually.)
If you have any interested
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